Summary

Critical Analysis

CHINUA ACHEBE'S NOVELLS

Things Fall Apart

By G.D. Killam

Things Fall Apart is about lgboland, in the eastern region of present-day

Nigeria, in the period between 1850-1900; that is, the period just prior to and
after the arrival of white men in this part of West Africa. The setting is
Umuofia and Mbanta, the two head towns in an association called the “nine
villages. Okonkwo, the hero of the novel, a great wrestler in his youth, is,
when we meet him, a renowned warrior, celebrated in song at religious
festivals, and one of the most wealthy, powerful, and influential people in
Umuofia. The conflict.in the novel, vested in Okonkwo, gets from the
arrangement of pounding blows which are levelled at traditional values by an
alien and more powerful culture, causing, in the end, the traditional society
to fall apart.

Things Fall Apart is a vision of what life being like in lgboland between
1850and 1900. Achebe makes a serious attempt to capture realistically the
strains and tensions of the experiences of Ibo people under the impact of
colonialism. Achebe is able to view objectively the forces which irresistibly
and inevitably destroyed traditional lbo social ties and with them the quality
of lbo life.

Things Fall Apart is written in three parts: the first and most important
is set in Umuofia before the coming of the white man--before his existence is
even known. The second part dramatizes Okonkwo's banishment to Mbanta,
the village of his mother's people, for sins committed against the Earth
Goddess, and describes, mostly through reports, the coming of the white man
to the nine villages, the establishment of an alien church, government, and
trading system, and the gradual encroachment of these on the traditional
patterns of tribal life. The third section and the shortest brings the novel
swiftly to a close, dramatizing the death of the old ways and the death of
Okonkwo.

Okonkwo was "clearly cut out for great things", but he had earned his
reputation: as a wrestler, he brought fame to himself and his village; as a
warrior, he had taken the approved symbols of his prowess, the heads of five
victims, by the time he was twenty-one years old; as a man who had achieved
personal wealth, he had three wives, two barns full of yams, and two
important titles, titles which could be acquired only when wealth had been
achieved and quality proven.

His stature then is presented as heroic. His story is introduced in

wording which look like those of Aristotelian misfortune the working out, in
the life of a hero of industry, courage, and eminence, of an insistent fatality
(in this book symbolized by the chi, or personal god), which transcends his
ability fully to understand or resist a foreordained sequence of events. Achebe
suggests as well the flaws in his nature-his inordinate ambition and his
refusal to tolerate anything less than excellence, taken in conjunction with
an impulsive rage to which he easily gives way and which produces irrational
responses to situation. In this connection, the comment that Okonkwo had
"no patience with his father is important, for Unoka, the father, represents
everything which Okonkwo personally despises, and his life embodies the
antithesis of those values most cherished by the lbo people. We are told that
Unoka was "poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat", that
he was "lazy and improvident, a “debtor", and a "coward who could not stand
the sight of blood”.
 In his tendency to daydream his childish hope that the kite would bring
back cloth and free him form the necessity of providing for himself he is
shown as a character in direct contrast to Okonkwo.

Various references in this passage indicate the way in which Achebe

uses environment not only to symbolize character and theme, but also to
define the moral and ethical principles on which lbo society is based and
which are his ultimate concern in the book.

While a continuing emphasis on male activities-acquisition of wealth

and wives, the production of children, courage and resourcefulness in sport
and war-informs the surface interest of the navel, all activity in Thing Fall
Apart is judged by what is or is not acceptable to "Ani, the Earth Goddess
and source of all fertility", the "ultimate judge of morality and conduct" in the
clan. In other words, a powerful "female principle" pervades the whole society
of Umuofia and Sits in judgment of events in the community.

The woman's world is normally benign: but this central scene in the first
part of the novel dramatizes the essential power who governs and controls
the society. Incredible as he may be, the epitome of the male rule, Okonkwo
is compliant to the female principle, and he follows the course of Chielo with
his beloved daughter Ezinma with a terror equal to that of his wife, powerless
to alter the course of events.

Okonkwo’s downfall and eventual banishment from the tribe at the end
of the first part of the novel proceed from offences committed "against the
earth “he first occurs during a week of peace when he beats his wife for
recklessness. Characteristically impulsive, Okonkwo was not one to let fear
of a goddess stand in his way. For his offence, Ani demands retribution in the
form of money, which Okonkwo pays. The second offence relates to the killing
of IKemefuna, a boy-hostage taken from a neighbouring clan and placed
Okonkwo’s household. Ikemefuna becomes like a son to Okonkwo. Nwoye,
Okonkwo’s eldest son, and a source of grave concern to his father because
he shows all the signs of possessing the "female" disposition of his
grandfathers under the influence of Ikemefuna__Nwoye, we told, "grows like
a yam kiln the rainy season". The deity eventually decrees that lkemefuna
must be. Okonkwo is warned that he must take no hand in the killing. Yet
for fear of appearing weak earing weak and cowardly, Okonkwo cuts down
lkemefuna with his "matchet".

The horror is not that Okonkwo has killed this boy whom he has grown
to love -- the authority and decision of the Oracle are not questioned. But, as
Okonkwo’s friend Oboelike says with a voice prophetic of the doom which will
overtake Okonkwo, his is the "kind of action for which the goddess wipes out
whole families.

The crime for which he is eventually exiled is that of accidentally killing

the son of a kinsman.

At this moment the female principle is invoked in the novel. It is the

accepted moral and ethical basis of the clan and is consistently observed. The
close dramatization of the female principle virtually disappears from the
second part of the book, to be invoked against in the final section and made
to account for the novel's tragic resolution.

In the second and third parts of the novel the critical social conflict takes
place. These sections present the social and psychological effect and the
tragic consequences which result from the clash between traditional lbo
society and British Christian in imperialism. In the second section, as well,
the relationship between Okonkwo and his refractory son Nwoye is delineated
in such a way as to transmute the broader cultural conflict to the personal
level.

Okonkwo is well received by his mother's people in the village of

Mankato which he goes in his banishment. The female principle within the
tribal ethic is apparent. Okonkwo's offence has been against the Earth
Goddess and has forced his exile. Yet it is to the mother's village that he
proceeds. Uchendu, his mother’s youngest brother and now an old man,
explains the rationale.

Though disappointed and disillusioned by the blows fate has dealt him,
Okonkwo begins with characteristic single-mindedness to build a new life for
himself along the same principles which he applied in his childhood, and to
design against his arrival to Umuofia seven years thus.

The reference to the chi is important. Okonkwo's achievement has been

heroic: he almost reached the summit of his ambition to become one of the
lords of the clan. But his destiny is otherwise, this he now suspects. When
Obierika had prophesied doom for Okonkwo at the time of the killing of
lkemefuna, the implications were lost on Okonkwo. Now he himself begins to
suspect that he is in the grip of an overriding. Destiny which he cannot
control. The fact that his chi says "nay" indicates his position as tragic hero
and foreshadows his tragic end.

Achebe tells the story of the coming of the white men-at first the
missionaries and then, close behind, the civil administrators, soldiers, and
traders with an economy and a restraint which belie the complexity of the
issues involved, a complexity which is directly reflected in the structure of
the novel. Oboelike makes two visits to Okonkwo during the latter's exile.
During the first visit he reveals, almost casually, that Abame, of the villages
in the union or the nine villages, "is no more”.

This chapter and the two which follow describe the vicissitudes of the
missionaries and how they overcome them. At first, they are treated casually
by the lbo people. Eventually their evangelists arrive at Mbanta, and
Okonkwo pauses to listen to one of them in the market square "in the hope
that it might Come to chasing the men out of the village or whipping them".
But in the end Okonkwo was fully convinced that the man was mad.
 Such is not the case with Nwoye, Okonkwo's son. Nwoye had grown
towards manhood under the influence and companionship of Ikemefuna, and
when the latter was killed, he "felt something give way inside him like the
snapping of a tightened bow. Now he is captivated by the new religion.

Through Nwoye's conversion (or disaffection) Achebe focuses the wider

social conflict between the two different ways of life as the personal level.

The third part of the novel begins by describing Okonkwo's return to

Umuofia after his seven years of exile, a return less auspicious than he
headwound be. Again, Achebe emphasizes the heroic stature of Okonkwo: he
has withstood reversals of fortune and personal calamities which would have
crushed less resilient spirit. “It seemed to him as if his chi might be making
amends for past disasters!”

Umuofia has changed more than Okonkwo had been set up for. The
white man has constructed an exchanging store and just because palm-oil
and portion became things of great price, and much money flowed into
Umuofia. And he has brought in a "lunatic religion". It is the religious
principles which Okonkwo sees as the force that changes the nature of village
life. His fear at the time of Nwoye's defection has now become a reality. He
remains firm to the old ways, joins in an attack which is made against the
Christian church, and for this, with several others, is arrested by the District
Commissioner and placed in irons in the jail. His feeling of embarrassment
encourages his last activities which finish in his passing.

The new faith does possess an appeal sufficiently strong to challenge

and undermine the old religion. At the same time, because of the new
emphasis on trade, the acquisitive nature of the society gains precedence.
The male principle of acquisitiveness for the first-time gain’s precedence over
the female, which heretofore had provided the ethical and moral basis of
conduct and acted as a restraint.
 The final pages of the novel are pages once more of seeming simplicity
of statement. Okonkwo prepares for the last day of this life, filled with' deep
foreboding and brooding nostalgia.

A meeting the following day is interrupted by the sudden appearance of

white authority in the person of the court messenger. Okonkwo, "trembling
with ate, unable to utter a word", drew his matchet.

He wiped his matched on the sand and went away.

Okonkwo’s suicide is reported off-stage. The grievous example is

finished, his disgrace is total. There is, moreover, irony of a tragic kind at the
end of the novel, for Okonkwo, in hanging himself, earns for himself a
dishonourable burial like his father Unoka, the thing he had looked for his
entire life to stay away from.

Okonkwo, "one of the greater men in Umuofia", is at the end totally

alienated from his people and "now will be buried like a dog".